Techniques for reducing network congestion are disclosed. In one embodiment, a method is disclosed comprising receiving, by a computing device, a packet from a sender over a network; retrieving, by the computing device, congestion information; inserting, by the computing device, congestion data representing the congestion information into a header option of the packet to generate an augmented packet; transmitting, by the computing device, the augmented packet to a receiver; receiving, by the computing device, a response packet, the response packet including the congestion data; and transmitting, by the computing device, the response packet to the sender.